


Case Status: Closed

by NoRationalThoughtRequired



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Christmas Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Guns, Humor, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Secret Relationship, Ugly Holiday Sweaters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:46:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5491010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoRationalThoughtRequired/pseuds/NoRationalThoughtRequired
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ah, the Christmas season. A time of never-ending traffic and bustling crowds and incessant Christmas cheer and too much snow and forced merrymaking at work-mandated holiday parties.  Homicide Detective Sif has all of those frustrations to contend with, of course, as well as a lieutenant who's pushing her to move up the ranks, the anniversary of her father's death, her mother's annual Disapproving Phone Call, far too many open cases thanks to the Svartalfar crime family and their murder spree, and, oh yeah, a secret relationship with fellow detective Loki. It's fine. Everything's fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Case Status: Closed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sabinelagrande](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabinelagrande/gifts).



> I got lucky and was given many exciting prompts! But I have a deep and abiding love for the detective genre, and so when I saw "detective AUs," it called to me and I could not resist. I shamelessly referenced many, many of my faves here, I just couldn't help myself. (There's a giant list of references at the end.) I also tried to work in some of the Warriors Three, Sif & Heimdall sibling time, Sif & Thor as figurative bros, and Frigga being awesome.
> 
> I had intended for this to be far shorter, but, um, I got a little carried away. Ooops? Hope you (and all of you wonderful Sif/Loki shippers) enjoy it!!! Happy Holidays! :)

**November 26, 2015**

Sif wakes far too early on Thanksgiving morning to a low rumbling in her ear and a paw batting at her nose. She cracks open an eye to see Benedick, one of Loki’s treasured Siamese cats, complete with an over-developed sense of entitlement and a healthy disregard for anyone else’s sleep schedule, staring imperiously and unrepentantly at her. He’s wearing a brightly colored hand-knit sweater with a turkey on the back and a wobbly _gobble gobble_ on the front in yellow yarn, and Sif doesn’t think she’s imagining the supremely unimpressed look on his feline face. She snorts at the sight of Loki’s very dignified cat in this very undignified sweater, and she immediately groans when she looks past Benedick to the bright blue numbers screaming _6:42_ at her from the clock.

He’s obviously trying to be quiet in concession to the early hour, but the apartment is not big, and now that she’s awake, Sif can hear Loki bustling about in his kitchen. The faint sounds of water running, a knife clacking against a cutting board, Loki’s hums, which meander from Taylor Swift to Christmas carols and sharply back again once he realizes what he’s doing, committing the unpardonable sin of singing Christmas songs before it’s yet time, all reach her ears, and she pulls the comforter tighter under her chin.

She glares at Benedick, who’s reaching under the comforter to paw at a loose thread near the collar of her shirt. “Your father’s already up. Why don’t you go pester _him_ for food? _Some_ of us were up until 2:15 finishing supplemental arrest reports, after all, _with nary a partner there to assist_!”

It doesn’t cure her problem of an abbreviated night’s sleep, but shouting makes her feel a little bit better nonetheless.

Loki’s bizarre _Bad Blood_ / _God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen_ mash-up trails off, and he appears in the doorway to his bedroom, wooden spoon and celery stalk in hand. He’s proudly adorned his own ridiculous Thanksgiving sweater, this one also with turkeys and a truly alarming number of pom poms sewn on at random. His other cat Beatrice, somehow free of any sartorially offensive Thanksgiving attire, weaves around his feet. He leans against the doorjamb and points the celery stalk at her.

“Hey, I _offered_ to stay and help. _You_ shooed me away, saying I needed to be coherent enough this morning to prep my contribution to Mother’s Thanksgiving dinner. And now I’m being castigated for it? Typical, Sif. _So_ typical. You know, I _had_ brewed someone their favorite cup of _I’ve-just-woken-up-and-need-caffeine-NOW_ coffee, but I guess that wasn’t neces—”

Sif sits bolt upright in bed, the sudden flurry of movement sending Benedick leaping to the floor with a displeased yowl and causing Beatrice to puff up her tail in alarm. Her eyes narrow. “If you know what’s good for you . . . .”

Loki smirks, his eyes darting up to Sif’s not inconsiderable case of bed head, but something in her eyes must be dangerous enough to get him moving, because not twenty seconds later, the blessed coffee is in Sif’s hands, and she’s propped up against Loki’s mountain of pillows, Loki himself sprawled beside her as he neglects the preparation of the stuffing in favor of cuddling Beatrice in his lap. The crown of his head brushes against her hip, and Sif gives in to the urge to card her fingers through his hair. He purrs almost like Beatrice when she does. She hides her fond smile behind her mug.

“What time do we need to be at your parents’ again?”

Loki hums as he runs a finger down Beatrice’s back. “Mother says lunch is to start at precisely noon, which means it might possibly—maybe, perhaps, if we’re lucky—be 1:15 by the time we all sit down to eat. So I figure that 11:30 to 12:45 is probably the safe zone.”

“Do we need to stop by my apartment to pick up my car so I can drive separately? Do we need to stagger our arrival times?”

Sif tries to keep the tension out of her voice. She’s not sure that she entirely succeeds.

Loki pauses before he replies, his fingers halting behind Beatrice’s ears. “We do not. I told Mother that I would pick you up because your place is on the way. She approves of us being so environmentally conscious.”

Sif, now sufficiently caffeinated, sets her empty mug on the bedside table with a _thunk_. Her hand hits the copy of _Anansi Boys_ that Loki’s been reading before bed for the past week (“For levity!” he insists, and there must be something to that, as he consistently dissolves into giggles every five minutes or so while reading it) and knocks it onto the floor, and the resulting noise sends Beatrice shooting off the bed with a start, fur bristled and claws bared. Loki croons at her to come back, but she abandons them in favor of joining Benedick, who’s loitering mistrustfully in the doorway.

“I know we both have our reasons for keeping this quiet, just thinking about the insinuating little comments that I’ll receive from half the squad is enough to make me want to go punch something very, _very_ hard, but this charade is growing wearisome,” Sif sighs. She tugs lightly on a section of Loki’s hair just above his left ear, and he cranes his neck to look at her. His eyes are solemn, and there’s a slight frown pulling at the corner of his lips. “I just keep thinking . . . . Yeah, we’ll have to deal with some shit, but for the most part, people will be happy for us. The people who really matter, that is. Our friends, your family, my brother . . . . That’s not nothing, Loki.”

His eyes meet hers for a long moment, and then he pushes himself up so that he’s propped up next to her against the headboard. “It’s not nothing,” he agrees as he kisses the tip of her nose. Her lips quirk up into a smile, and she rests her hand over his where he’s worrying one of his fingernails. “You know,” he begins, a hint of mischief beginning to creep into his tone, “speaking of our _dear_ friends, it’s come to my attention that they, as well as the rest of our squad, and Oh Captain My Captain Hoenir, and nearly half the force have a bit of a betting pool going.”

Sif groans and rolls her eyes. “On when we’ll get together?”

“Mmmmmhmmmm.”

“Why am I not surprised even a little bit?” Sif rubs at the space between her eyes, trying to stave off the headache that she now feels coming on. “Well, seeing as we’re already together, they’re all wrong, the joke’s on them. And Hoenir’s a Lieutenant, not a Captain.”

Loki chuckles. “‘Lieutenant My Lieutenant’ just doesn’t have the same ring, though. He doesn’t seem to mind the elevation in rank, erroneous though it may be.”

“Yeah, I bet he doesn’t,” Sif mutters and rests her head against Loki’s shoulder. “So you mention this betting pool . . . why, exactly? And how did you even find out about it? Do I even want to know?”

Loki snorts and playfully pinches her wrist just below the cuff of her old long-sleeved academy shirt. “You’re a _police officer_ , my dear Sif. Surely you’re familiar with the concept of _confidential informants_. I have my sources, you know this.”

Sif lightly shoves him away. “Yeah, forgive me, I didn’t realize that your institutional paranoia extends to _our own department_. I should’ve known. But now that we know this information, what are we going to do about it? You have to have _some_ plan. There’s _always_ a plan.”

Loki’s lips curl into a slow grin. “I’m in the process of finding out the dates people have picked. We obviously can’t join the pool ourselves, you know, as _us_ , although I _have_ considered creating a fake identity of an officer in some useless department that no one even knows anything about but yet sounds like a totally plausible police department and entering that way, but I think our computer system is finally sophisticated enough that I’m not 100% sure that I can pull that off without triggering some alarm bells along the way, so that’s probably out, but! We _can_ still use this information to our advantage and punish everyone who participates by perfectly timing our reveal and ensuring that precisely _none_ of them take home the pot, which, by my calculations, is well over two thousand bucks at this point and seemingly growing every day.”

Sif feels an answering grin blossom on her own face. “Teach them a lesson, you mean?” Loki winks at her in response. “Sometimes, I really do like the way you think.”

He leans in and whispers _show your appreciation, then_ against her lips.

She does, and she is very appreciative, indeed.

 

+

 

Later, much later, after they’ve taken each other apart and put each other back together again and finally dragged themselves out of bed, Sif mashes some sweet potatoes with great fervor and comments, “Actually, I will need you to drop me off at my place after lunch. I don’t have any more clean blouses here, and if I walk into the squad room tonight wearing one that hasn’t yet been washed, Hogun’s going to notice, you _know_ he will, and he will be suspicious and I just don’t have it in me today to be completely indifferent to his knowing glances and subtle eyebrow raises, and that will lead to probing questions, and he’ll start asking around, and no. I just can’t even give him the opportunity.”

Loki grunts an acknowledgement and continues carefully measuring _just_ the right amount of sage for the stuffing. “Okay, mark that down as another thing in the pro-telling-everyone column: maintaining two apartments is tedious as _all hell_. Also: why does Hoenir hate us? Having to work Thanksgiving. Can’t all the murderers in the city take a break for _one day_? _One day_ , Sif. Why is this so much to ask?”

Sif chooses not to remark on the fact that Loki has more or less signaled his willingness to moving in together (although she files this development away for further contemplation) and says instead, “At least we get Christmas off. He does possess _some_ mercy, or so it seems.”

“I suppose stranger things have happened,” Loki agrees. “Hey, that reminds me, speaking of our fearsome leader, how many times do you think I’ll be able to greet all visitors to the squad room and answer all phone calls with _Ho-Ho-Ho-Homicide_ before Hoenir remembers that he’s banned me from saying it?”

Sif tries not to laugh, she really does, for Loki needs no encouragement, but she can’t help it. Loki’s glee at saying the phrase and Hoenir’s equal glee at the tongue-lashing he had bestowed upon Loki after he had finally had _enough_ are too vivid in her memory. “Oh, Loki. You’re not really going to try it? If I recall correctly, you’ve always thought that _discretion is the better part of valor_ is exemplary life advice, and he absolutely blew his stack at you over this last time.”

Loki’s eyes twinkle as he nudges her shoulder. “But this is festive and fun! And it’s been three years, Sif. _Three long years_. I’m going to do it. Just you wait.”

“I look forward to the impending disaster,” Sif replies and reaches for the cinnamon.

 

+

 

Thanksgiving lunch had still been in full swing not even five hours before, but when Sif rolls into HQ at precisely 6:50 p.m., ten minutes early as always, Loki’s already ditched his garish turkey sweater for a festive Christmas-themed plaid and a Santa hat perched atop his head at a jaunty angle.

She drops her latest case file, depicting what is undoubtedly the Svartalfar crime family/syndicate’s most recent foray into murder and mayhem, not that she actually _prove_ that they were involved with anything more than hearsay and speculation, that is, onto her desk with a plop. She sprawls in her chair, still in a bit of a tryptophan-induced haze, and rests her boots on her desk. Her toe knocks against a stack of frustratingly-still-open cases, and they threaten to cascade to the floor in a shower of ballistics reports and gory crime scene photos. Sif eyes the stack, willing it to remain in position by the sheer force of her glare alone.

It behaves, if only just.

Loki seemingly takes no notice. “Ho-Ho-Ho-Homicide,” he greets her, as promised, without lifting his eyes from his own open file, photograph upon photograph from the crime scene and the autopsy spread out before him. He’s been staring at the pictures for nearly two weeks straight now, or so it seems, obviously hoping that if he looks long enough, a clue, a hint of admissible evidence, will spring out at him, like a magic–eye poster or a Where’s Waldo puzzle.

She opens her mouth, witty retort at the ready, only to be stopped in her tracks by a shout from the LT’s office.

“God _damn it, Odinson!_ ” Lieutenant Hoenir bellows as he marches out to their cluster of desks in the center of the squad room. In her peripheral vision, Sif sees Volstagg’s eyes go wide, and she hears Fandral’s nervous titter escape before Hogun can shush him. “It’s been _three years_! Three years you’ve managed to behave! What did I tell you about using that juvenile phrase in this, a _professional_ environment?”

Loki goes very, very still in his chair, and he looks up slowly before meeting Hoenir’s eyes, as if he can avoid further ire by moving carefully and cautiously. “Not to?”

Hoenir huffs, momentarily mollified by Loki’s apparent willingness not to argue with him, for once. “That’s right. _Not to_.”

“Yeah, besides,” Sif breaks in, emboldened by Hoenir’s drastically-reduced volume, “It’s a little tired. You’ve said it every year, even the banned ones, although in those years you at least saved it for greeting people when we all go out to the bar after shift. You need some new material, Loki.”

Hoenir turns his glare her way. Sif refuses to quail. “Don’t you start,” he says, pointing fiercely at her before turning on his heel and stalking off back into his office.

“Et tu, Sif?” Loki comments over Fandral’s hushed _how did he even **hear** that?_ once Hoenir’s safely back behind his desk. “That greeting is funny every year. You say you hate bad puns, Sif, but you’re a terrible liar. That’s why you leave the lying to me during interrogations.”

_True enough_ , Sif thinks with a shrug. No one else in the Homicide Department can get a suspect to willingly dance along down the primrose path of complete and utter self-incrimination like Loki can, appearing eminently sympathetic and caring and oh so _reasonable_. It’s a goddamn work of _art_ , watching him weave the web of lies and trapping the outmatched, outclassed suspect under the weight of their own attempts at deceit and half-hearted efforts at rationalization and unwitting admissions of guilt. And he does it all with a twinkle in his eye and a pleasant, welcoming smile on his face.

If he weren’t so effective at his job, she’d have to hate him.

Okay. And if she weren’t nearly head-over-heels in love with him, too, but that’s still a relatively recent phenomenon, alright, she’s still getting used to how that feeling sits on her shoulders and carves out its own little space deep in the center of her chest, just behind her heart.

She just shakes her head and doesn’t comment, and if she spends an hour or so googling _bad Christmas puns_ and making up her own little list of ones that she can spring on Loki when he least suspects it, well, nobody needs to know.

 

*

 

**December 1, 2015**

 

“Now I know red is a color of the season,” Hoenir says as he stands before the assembled squad at their monthly state-of-the-department meeting, “but that doesn’t mean we need to coat the Board in it. _This_ ,” he waves both hands at the sea of red names listed under each of the detectives’ names written up along the top of the giant dry erase board prominently displayed in the squad room, a silent sentinel standing guard and doling out judgment in an effort to not-so-gently prod the detectives into bettering their collective closing rate, “this is patently unacceptable. We had good, strong numbers in 2014; we can’t backslide in 2015 or we’re going to start seeing cuts. Open cases to closed, people. You all know this. Red to black.”

“ _Red, the blood of angry men_ ,” Sif hears Fandral mutter to Loki with a wink and an elbow nudge as Hoenir pauses to flip through a set of reports.

“ _Black, the dark of ages past_ ,” Loki responds under his breath. He knocks his own elbow against Sif’s. She rolls her eyes, but she hears the strain in Loki’s voice. Not even Loki has escaped the tyranny of the red names. There they are: three of them, one dating back all the way to April, each of them marring his quest for The Perfect Year and a 100% closing rate, each of them a weight on his shoulders, each of them a reason why he works double and triple overtime and why, when he _does_ leave HQ, he relentlessly paces his living room, poring over the case files, trying to find an opening he can exploit.

“LT, if I may?” Volstagg asks, politely waiting for Hoenir’s nod before he continues. “You know what the problem here is. All the higher-ups know what the problem here is. The problem here is fucking Malekith and Algrim and all those sons-of-bitches in the Svartalfar Family. We know they’re the ones behind all these murders. _They know_ we know they’re the ones behind all these murders. But there’s no evidence. None! Nothing we can put into a probable cause affidavit, anyway. Nothing that will support a warrant. Nothing that won’t get torn to shreds in court by any defense attorney who didn’t get their law degree out of a Cracker Jack box. And without the evidence, those names are staying red, and they’re gonna _continue_ to stay red.”

Hoenir heaves a sigh. “I know, Volstagg.”

“It’s not just us,” Hogun adds. “I have friends in Vice, friends in Narcotics, friends in Burglary, friends in Arson, they’re all saying the same thing. The Svartalfars are taking over, we all know it, but they’re managing to do it without leaving a shred of evidence behind, so there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“I don’t understand why the Feds haven’t swooped in and RICO’d their asses to hell and back,” Fandral says. “There something going on that we don’t know about, LT?”

Hoenir glares over his eyeglasses, although it lacks heat, as tinged with exhaustion as it is. “You think they tell me these things? Feds don’t see fit to tell me _shit_. So. My guess is _probably_.”

“Maybe the Svartalfars have brought some demands to the Mayor?” Volstagg wonders aloud. “Although if they _had_ , we'd almost certainly all know about it by now. Malekith’s taken a page out of that Fisk guy’s book. He does enjoy a good press conference, telling us all about how he’s bettering humanity with every semi-shady real estate deal and just-barely-legit merger he brokers. _Ooooooh, we all just love that Malekith_. I’m surprised that wasn’t the lead headline in Sunday’s paper.”

At the reference to the Mayor, nearly everyone in the squad shoots a glance at Loki, and Sif feels his shoulders hunch defensively. She alone stares resolutely forward, glaring at the six bright red names in her column on the Board.

“You think he tells me anything?” Sif can tell from his tone that Loki’s attempting a smile. It falls flat. “You should ask Thor, he’s deputy chief of staff, not me.”

Hoenir just grunts, breezing past Loki’s obvious discomfort. “Huh. Well. Regardless, these cases are going to break. They _will_. The Perfect Crime doesn’t exist. If we need to round up all of the lower-level enforcers and pushers and getaway drivers in the city and lean on them until _someone_ breaks, we’re going to do it, as much as we can within the confines of the law. If we nail one of these assholes and then some evidence gets suppressed because one of _my detectives_ couldn’t remember how to properly Mirandize someone, I’m going to shove my foot so far up their ass, I’ll be kicking out teeth, _so fucking help me_.”

Hoenir gathers his papers and marches back into his office with one last doleful glare at the Board. The rest of the squad breaks up with a round of nervous chuckles, and Sif follows Loki back to the chaos that is their desks, case files freely migrating from one side to the other, a half-empty pot of coffee on Loki’s side threatening to unleash destruction upon Sif’s old-fashioned Rolodex, a monument to days gone by.

Loki drops down in his chair with a sigh and rests his chin on his hands. “If we try to take this to Mother, _any_ of these cases, see if there’s enough there for a grand jury and an indictment, well, I don’t think she’ll _actually_ laugh me out of her office, but I can’t make any promises.”

Sif lightly punches him on his shoulder, affection disguised as one partner appropriately reassuring another in an appropriate manner. “We’ll get them. Somehow.”

Loki catches her hand and squeezes her fingers, brief, fleeting, near desperate. “Oh to have your optimism, dear Sif.”

 

*

 

**December 9, 2015**

 

The alarm springs to life, and Sif wakes far too early and alone in her own bed on her least favorite day of the year.

She presses her head back against the pillows and sighs, hugging herself and letting the warmth of the covers continue to envelop her before the inane babble of the DJ finally gets to be too much for her bullshit meter and she snakes a hand out from under the comforter and slaps at her alarm clock to turn it off.

She slides out of bed and flexes her toes in the plush carpet as she pads over to the window and peeks through the blinds. It’s still mostly dark outside, but she can see the hint of snow flurries swirling around in the pre-dawn light, and she may hate this day with burning intensity, but it’s still early enough in the season that the sight of snow brings a smile to her face instead of a resigned sigh, so there’s that at least. The day _could_ , she supposes, be worse.

She gets a text from Loki while she’s stirring sugar into her oatmeal.

_Crime scene!!_ followed by an address out in an area that hipsters and yuppies and many of Sif and Loki’s old high school classmates have recently started to claim as their own. (Loki’s been looking at real estate listings in the area. He thinks Sif doesn’t know. He’s neither the only excellent detective nor the only one capable of stealth in their relationship, thank you very much.) _I’ll bring the coffee, you bring your bright eyes and keen insight into murderers and their misdeeds_.

He doesn’t reference what day it is, and she loves him a little bit more for that.

_You **better** have coffee, you fucker_ is how she expresses that love.

_; )_ is his only response, so she knows he understands.

She brushes her teeth and washes her faces and layers up, a line of defense against the chill in the air, and just before she wraps her scarf around her neck, she reaches instead for her brush and sweeps her hair into a high ponytail and then secures it further into a bun using one of the sharp silver hairpins that Loki gave her for her thirtieth birthday.

_There you go, Siffy_ , she hears her father’s voice. _Up and out of the way, now you’re ready to fight_.

She looks in the mirror and squints, part of her hoping that if she looks hard enough, she’ll be able to see some twenty-five years in the past and her father fastening the clip in her hair and kissing the top of her head as he rests his strong hands on her shoulders.

There’s nothing for it, though. It’s just a memory.

_I miss you, Dad_ , she whispers to her reflection.

She squares her shoulders and sighs. Now she’s ready.

 

+

 

When she arrives at the crime scene, Loki has her favorite coffee, a rich Jamaican blend with three shots of espresso, at the ready and were it not for the patrol officers milling about and assistants from the medical examiner’s office crouched over next to the elaborate wooden gingerbread village display on the small pocket of a front lawn and . . . the suspect, it seems, already handcuffed and crying on the porch steps about six feet away from Loki, she would kiss him.

“What’s all this?” she asks, gesturing with her freshly-acquired coffee to the sobbing young man, his glasses askew and his hair in disarray.

“I was just about to text you to say not to bother coming over,” Loki replies. “The facts are these: our newest friend here strangled his husband last night with a strand of Christmas lights and left him in Gingerbread City over there. He was halfway out of the state when he had an attack of conscience and came back and called it in himself, and he’s been inconsolable ever since.”

Sif just stares at him, in a state of disbelief over his stroke of luck at catching an open-and-shut case for once, a welcome break from the misery heaped upon them by the Svartalfars. “Well. Would that they all were this easy to close.”

“Indeed,” Loki nods, an unusually genial smile present on his face. “Now there’s just the paperwork. I got a confession recorded already, but we’ll get one in writing, too, back at the station. Maybe a video one, juries like those. Although, if you ask me, there is literally a 1000% chance this guy is going to take a plea if one’s offered, no trial for him. And, hey, check it out.”

He knocks his lower leg against Sif’s, and she looks down to see lights in the shape of Christmas bulbs shining through his trousers.

“I wasn’t aware when I got dressed this morning that these socks would be prescient,” he says, nodding to the end of the strand of lights that trails out from underneath the sheet the ME’s have placed over the deceased, “but here we are.”

Sif can’t help herself and she snorts. “Don’t you think you’re a little _old_ for ridiculous Christmas socks?”

Loki feigns horror and gasps. “Sif, I’ll be ninety-five, sitting on a rocking chair on my front porch, shaking my fist at a cloud, and I _still_ won’t be too old for ridiculous Christmas socks. Or ridiculous Christmas sweaters. Or ridiculous Christmas ties,” he says, pointing to the knot of his tie, just visible underneath his scarf and displaying part of a scene from _The Nightmare Before Christmas_.

Sif shakes her head. There are times that she is acutely aware that her chosen romantic partner is completely absurd, and this is absolutely one of those times.

“I don’t know why people think you’re difficult to buy gifts for. If only they knew you are so easily satisfied by ugly clothing that you pretend to wear ironically but that you actually secretly love, no one would ever again cringe when they get your name in the Secret San—Non-Denominational Holiday Gift Exchange.”

“It’s not like I make that love a secret!” Loki throws his hands up in the air, almost sending his pencil and little case notebook flying through the air. “I wore a hideous Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sweater yesterday. Fandral even admired the blinking red nose. How do they think I obtain these things? Do they think my clothes just magically appear on my body? Do they think I get dressed with no regard for my sartorial choices and what I’m putting on my person? I do not understand.”

Sif shrugs, a grin starting to work its way across her face. She didn’t expect to feel so lighthearted on this day of all days, and she has to tamp down on a renewed urge to kiss Loki for his perceptiveness, always rearing its head precisely when she needs it. “Poor dears, they’re not the most observant, now are they?”

Loki gives her a significant look. “Pity they’re all detectives, yeah? Darcy, we about ready here?”

Darcy slams the back door of the ME’s van shut and gives him a thumbs-up. “Ready when you are, boss.”

Loki jerks his head at one of the officers, who hauls their suspect, still sobbing, up to his feet. “Onward we go!” Loki proclaims, gallantly offering Sif his arm as he walks her to her car. “See you back at the station, fair maiden.”

His eyes are sparkling and snowflakes have gathered in his hair and on his eyelashes, and Sif settles for rolling her eyes and surreptitiously squeezing his hand out of sight from the others, her lips remaining unkissed.

 

+

 

The day, not surprisingly, goes downhill from there, despite a lively round of _What’s The Greatest Cop Movie Ever?_ among Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun that very nearly engulfs the entire squad.

Sif curses Malekith, both under her breath and aloud, violently and creatively, to the delight of the rest of the squad, as her cases tied to the Svartalfars remain stalled and open.

She receives the customary yearly phone call from her mother, which starts out poorly as the specter of her father hovers over both of them, and ends even worse once her mother gets started on her annual harangue about Sif’s _unladylike_ career choice and her apparent inability to hold down a relationship and the ever-present _tick-tick-ticking_ of her biological clock, the conversation replete with such recurring attractions as dire predictions about Sif’s waning childbearing years and laments over _why can’t you just meet a nice man_? and the latest entry in the ongoing saga of _Why Can’t My Children Give Me Grandchildren? Woe Is Me_.

It’s only Loki’s hand on hers, a warning, a restraint, that keeps her from throwing her phone at the Board in frustration, venting her ire on two fronts at once.

She slams open a file, furious, and buries herself within it, determinedly chewing on her lip as she contemplates the case, only surfacing when Heimdall stops by to deliver more bad news: as head of Internal Affairs, his presence is required in a disciplinary hearing that is likely to last hours, well beyond the usual time he and Sif head to the cemetery every December 9th to pay their respects to Sif’s father, Heimdall’s step-father.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, of course it’s fine,” she assures him, brushing off his concern, hoping her smile doesn’t look as brittle as it feels.

She tries not to shrink under Heimdall’s stare, the one that always makes her feel as though he’s looking right through her, right into her very _soul_ , so that he can see all of her sins and secrets writ large, and, irrelevantly, she thinks it’s probably a good thing for the criminals of the city that Heimdall’s no longer working Homicide, because he and Loki would, quite frankly, be the most terrifyingly effective interrogation partnership in the history of law enforcement.

Heimdall blessedly does not comment on how it’s obviously _not fine_ , instead choosing to do something truly terrible to Sif’s heart by kissing her once on her forehead and saying lowly, in barely more than a murmur, “You’re a good cop, Sif. A good _person_. He’d be proud of you, best of daughters, best of women.”

She refuses to cry in the squad room. Refuses.

So, with a shuddering breath, she doesn’t, and her day continues to trundle on.

Two hours later, right as her shift is ending and she’s wrapping herself up in her coat to head out on her last errand of this, yet another December 9th, Loki surfaces from wherever he’s been lurking for most of the afternoon, already bundled up in his own bespoke coat and scarf. “I heard Heimdall’s trapped,” he says, almost idly.

Sif just grunts, and her dread and resignation almost choke her, preventing anything more.

“If you want company . . . .” He trails off, uncharacteristically unsure of his footing, and that, more than anything, draws Sif’s attention.

She bites back the _seriously? you’d really do this?_ that instinctively springs to the tip of her tongue and instead tries valiantly for a joke. “I should’ve known you’d willingly spend time in a graveyard.”

Loki examines his fingernails before pulling his gloves on, looking for all the world like he’s completely unconcerned about what he’s proposed doing for her. Only the tightness in the crinkle by his left eye gives him away. It’d be imperceptible to anyone else, but Sif, she’s always known him so well. He hums, and she wishes she were standing close enough to feel it rumble in his chest. “Well, I am a _homicide_ detective. And besides,” he says, raising his voice for the benefit of any stragglers from their shift who might be listening in before leaving for the day, hoping to spring in with a triumphant _ah ha! We knew it! We **knew** you’re passionately in love with one another!_ , “Tyr had nothing but endless patience with me when I was seven and the gangliest yellow belt the world had ever seen. He put up with so many stray elbows to the nose without complaint. Of course I’ll go.”

His eyes say _it’s my boyfriendly duty and privilege_ and also _like hell I’m letting you go alone_ , and Sif nods and tries not to lean in to his palm where it rests on the small of her back as they walk out to their cars.

Once there, he gives her space, standing several rows away, pretending to examine the detail-work on the doors of a small mausoleum as the snow swirls around him. Or maybe he _is_ actually examining it with real interest, it’s hard to tell with him sometimes, even for Sif.

She blinks the snow from her eyes and tears her gaze away from Loki. She never knows what to say when she’s here. Every year, she stands there in silence for at least five minutes, wishing she had Loki’s gift of words, wishing she had Frigga’s casual eloquence, before she finally starts off with a _Hi Dad_ and launches into tales of what all she’s done over the past year, her most exciting cases, the most ridiculous sights on her yearly summer road trip with Thor (this year they had driven up into Canada, into Québec, giving Thor the opportunity to bust out his surprisingly still-perfect French, as if his high school classes in it weren’t going on two decades in the past), the progress in her relationship with Loki.

“He’s here with me today, Dad,” she whispers, her words slightly awe-tinged, her fingers tracing the letters on the headstone. “You’d approve, I think. We’re good to each other. Good _for_ each other.”

She lingers for a few minutes longer, and it’s not until she crosses herself right before walking away that the tears come, and she swipes furiously at her eyes. By the time she meets up with Loki again, her eyes are red-rimmed and tear tracks have dried on her face, but he says nothing, he merely digs into the pocket of his coat and offers her a silver flask.

“Are you kidding me?” she asks, utterly baffled.

He shrugs. “Sometimes, you just have to give into the cliché of being a detective.”

She takes a sip, because _why the hell not_ , and it’s her favorite whiskey, and it burns all the way down, and only the heat that she feels creeping up into her cheeks when Loki offers her his arm and escorts her back to their cars can match it.

 

+

 

That night, as they move together, she clutches him a little more tightly than usual, her nails bite harder into his shoulders, her gasps escape her with more desperation.

He says nothing, just pours more passion, more lust, more adoration, more desire, more _love_ into his kisses, into his caresses, into his murmured words of devotion.

She falls just a little bit farther.

 

*

 

**December 12, 2015**

 

On the second Saturday of December, every year, without fail, just before holiday parties and festivities ramp up into full swing, Frigga hosts an all-day baking extravaganza, in which Thor and Loki and Sif are all invited to assist in the preparation of copious amounts of baked goods.

The stereo plays Christmas classics, candles are lit, the fireplace pops and crackles, and the finishing touches are put on the various Christmas trees throughout the house in advance of a bevy of Christmas parties attended by the city’s elite who wish to hobnob with the Mayor and his wife, the head of the appellate division of the District Attorney’s Office. Odin himself is even persuaded to abandon the hallowed corridors of City Hall to make an appearance, and he always sits in his armchair next to the fireplace, smoking a pipe, the almost-sweet scent of the tobacco cloying in the air, and he and Thor talk strategy and their upcoming efforts before City Council while Loki pretends to ignore them, claiming he has no use for politics while secretly filing away every scrap of information that he hears, and throws himself fervently into baking with Frigga as Sif dutifully hands them ingredients.

This year, Thor arrives just after Sif and Loki, and he catches Sif mid-removing her scarf and wraps her up in a big bear hug while poking her repeatedly in the side.

“Sif, Sif, Sif!” he booms, infectious joy infusing his voice and making Sif smile from the mere proximity to it. “How goes it, my dear friend?”

Sif wiggles her way out of his grasp and puts him in a headlock, her retaliation for his tickling. “You saw me yesterday, you _giant_ _nerd_. You consumed roughly a metric ton of sugar and cinnamon, it was horrifying,” she comments to Loki, who graciously allows himself to be swept up in an impromptu cuddle pile with only minimal grumbling. “We get coffee on a weekly basis, no need to act as though you haven’t seen me in five months.”

Thor noisily kisses her on the cheek and extricates himself with one last slap to both Sif’s and Loki’s backs. “No matter, no matter. I’m always overjoyed to see you, my dear Lady Sif. Here, Mother,” he says to Frigga as he slides a snowflake-adorned tin across the kitchen counter. “Jane had a prior engagement, but she sends her apologies and this toffee that she made last night. It . . . is edible,” he allows diplomatically. He presses a kiss to Frigga’s cheek and laughs good-naturedly when she forgets that her hands are covered in flour and leaves a white handprint on his plaid coat.

“I welcome all well-intentioned culinary efforts,” Frigga says before dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “It’s a good thing you and Loki both inherited _my_ skill in the kitchen and not your father’s, otherwise you both would’ve starved by now.”

“Come now, Mother,” Loki chides as he washes his hands, cracks his knuckles, and dives into gathering the ingredients for peanut butter fudge. “Takeout is a thing, we’d be fine. And cops are natural food scavengers. I would not want for sustenance.”

Frigga rolls her eyes and Sif sneaks past and reaches out to flick Loki’s ear, and the day passes with great cheer on the part of all involved. Thor takes over the preparation of apple cider and mulled wine when he’s not being haled into the living room by Odin to jot down notes about a promising new ordinance or some resolution or other. Frigga and Loki bake four different kinds of fudge, gingerbread, gingersnaps, a yule log, cake pops, chocolate and white chocolate covered pretzels, and a truly astonishing amount of peppermint-related treats. Sif, a competent cook but not a creative one, stays well out of their way and gathers the components for the gingerbread house that, once completed, will sit on display in the foyer of the house for the rest of the Christmas party season.

She’s well suited to her supervisory role, and both Frigga and Loki reward her for her diligence by offering her samples as they bake. There are worse positions to have than that of Official Taste Tester, and she teasingly sticks her tongue out at Thor when Loki whacks him on the hand with a wooden spoon when Thor tries to steal a piece of white chocolate fudge but he slips her a piece without fuss.

As she carefully frosts a sugar cookie shaped like an angel intended specifically for a holiday party for foster-care children, Frigga bemoans the newest attorney to join her division, a wet-behind-the-ears, just-passed-the-bar young man who has apparently been unable to file a brief without causing utter disaster, leading to several hasty and placating motions that Frigga’s had to file over the past week.

“I’m telling you, I wouldn’t mind having someone with a good head on her shoulders in there, that would certainly be nice.”

Sif absently hums her agreement as she counts out gumdrops for the gingerbread house.

Loki comes around the counter to stand beside her, and he clears his throat. “She’s talking about _you_ , Sif.”

Sif’s head snaps up at that. “Wait. What? _Me_ , a lawyer?”

“Yes, _you_ ,” Frigga says, smiling but clearly perfectly serious. “With your law enforcement experience, you would make an outstanding criminal lawyer. You’re smart, you’re organized, you’re used to working with . . . interesting personalities.”

“She means _you_ , dork,” Thor says to Loki as he re-enters the kitchen after yet another planning session with Odin. Loki says nothing in response, but he _does_ grab a purple gumdrop from Sif’s bowl and launches it at Thor’s nose, which he hits with unerring accuracy.

Sif shakes her head in despair. “You’re both in your _thirties_.”

“We’re young at heart,” Loki deadpans, and he positively _drowns_ a strawberry in chocolate sauce as if to prove his point.

Despite the diversion, Frigga is undeterred. “You really should consider taking the LSAT next time it’s offered,” she tells Sif. “You can keep working, take law classes at night. I’d hire you in a heartbeat once you finished law school and passed the bar. You’d make a fine prosecutor.”

Sif, momentarily overwhelmed by the prospect and feeling warm inside as a result of Frigga’s unshakable faith in her, catches the barest hint of a shit-eating grin on Loki’s face before he says, in a very obvious _I’m trying to start trouble_ tone, “Oh, I don’t know, Mother. I think she should become a defense attorney.”

Frigga gives him a dirty look and swats at him with a hand towel. Loki takes it with good grace, his grin unabated. “Just think of the joy you’d get cross-examining me when you’re defending an alleged murderer,” he says to Sif, his shoulder knocking companionably against hers. “Your work would be cut out for you.”

“It always is with you,” Sif sighs. She catches the end of a knowing glance shared between Frigga and Thor, and she doesn’t _think_ they know, she’s reasonably certain that Loki would have apprised her if he had disclosed their relationship to his mother and brother. Scratch that. Forget about _Loki_ telling her, neither Frigga nor Thor would let such a revelation pass without revelry, there would be backslaps and hugs and happy tears and many variations upon the theme of _I always knew this would happen!_ No, they definitely do not yet know. But perhaps they suspect? Or, more likely, they’re probably like all of their co-workers and think that something _should_ be going on, and they think Sif’s earlier comment is really indicative of some grand hidden passion, just waiting for the right moment to burst to the fore, and she needs to react to their look somehow, she knows they know she saw it, but she doesn’t know how, and, really, this whole endeavor is becoming _exhausting_.

She settles on, “What? What was that look?” She narrows her eyes and furrows her brow and points to both Frigga and Thor in turn, she’s the very picture of suspicious curiosity.

She has absolutely no idea what her face will do if she looks over at Loki, so she refuses, which means she catches the way Frigga looks at him appraisingly before assuming the most innocent, give-nothing-away expression Sif’s ever seen in her _life_ , holy _shit_ , she’s glad Frigga’s on the side of the angels, because if she ever had to face that expression on the opposite side of an interrogation table, she’d just throw her hands up in disgust because there would be no extracting _any_ information whatsoever from _that_ face.

“What look, dear?” Frigga asks mildly, an expression of polite neutrality settling over her features.

Sif gives up. “Never mind,” she mutters. “Pass me those M&M’s, Loki, they’ll look great on the roof of this thing.”

He does, and he takes great care to make sure that their fingers don’t brush.

She doesn’t know if she’s grateful or not.

 

+

 

“We need to tell them,” Sif says as she shuts the passenger-side door and Loki starts up his car, the backseat laden with decorative tins filled with sugary sweets. There’s a tiny bit of confectioner’s sugar at the corner of his lips, a remnant of one of the three lemon bars he had consumed over the course of the day. She wipes it off with her thumb, and she has to fight the urge to linger, lest someone be watching from the house. “There are too many levels of bizarre mind games involved, and I don’t know how much more I can handle.”

Loki nods, no fight left in him on the subject. “You’re right.”

She waits for him to say more, as he does, after all, generally _love_ engaging in bizarre mind games, but when nothing is forthcoming, she reaches over to squeeze his hand where it rests on the gearshift. “We can work out the details later, but no later than Christmas, yeah? I’m tired of spending very pleasant days in your company and then having to wait until we’re out of sight of everyone we know before we can do so much as hold hands, let alone kiss.”

Loki sighs and lets his thumb brush against her index finger. He looks _weary_ , and Sif takes a moment to be thankful that at least the weight of keeping their relationship quiet is not resting on her shoulders alone.

“I’m tired of that, too,” he finally admits, his voice a whisper in the quiet car. “No later than Christmas.”

 

*

 

**December 17, 2015**

 

Sif peers into the darkness through the windshield of her car—her own nondescript Accord, not a department-issue patrol car—and squints at the shadowy figures she sees bustling around by the loading dock of the warehouse. She looks again through her camera’s lens, and, yeah, the men lurking about are known associates of the Svartalfars, not new faces. After taking a few shots just for the hell of it, she shoulders the camera and reaches to snag a couple of French fries from where the container is balanced in the cupholder.

“So your CI didn’t say if the upper echelon was going to be in attendance tonight, did he?” she asks Loki, who is sitting in the passenger seat, half-heartedly picking his way through a salad.

Loki shakes his head. “He seemed reasonably confident that _something_ was going to be going down over here tonight, which, given _that_ activity—“ he gestures vaguely in the direction of the warehouse with his fork “—was obviously correct, but no, he would’ve said if he knew that Malekith or someone would be here. So a possibility, but a remote one.”

Sif grunts and rolls her neck on her shoulders, trying to relieve some of the tension that’s been building as the squad’s open cases on the Svartalfars drag on. “We’re getting too old for this stakeout shit, Loki.”

“Nonsense, Sif!” Loki exclaims, forcibly injecting vigor and enthusiasm into his tone. He takes a long swig of his Coke and uncovers an orange slice in his salad, hiding beneath a piece of kale. “Stakeouts are _way awesome_ , I know all kinds of games we can play to pass the time, and I even have a special Christmas Stakeout playlist on my phone, it’ll be _so great_.”

Sif just groans and shoves him into the passenger-side door.

They eat in silence for awhile, the only noise the crinkling of the wrapper for Sif’s cheeseburger and the occasional shutter-click when one of them thinks they spot a new face from their vantage point halfway down the street.

Finally, Loki tires of his salad and pushes the container to the floorboard before turning to Sif with an expectant look on his face. “So they’re not doing anything exciting out there. Why’d Hoenir want to see you in his office earlier?”

There’s precisely zero use trying to hide anything from _Loki_ , of all people, so Sif doesn’t even bother with issuing denials. “He wants me to take the sergeant’s exam in March.” She balls up her now-empty wrapper and busies herself with finishing up the fries, taking care to avoid Loki’s gaze.

“You should take it,” Loki says. “You’d obviously pass, I mean, _come on_ , and the squad would be all the better with you in a leadership role.”

“I don’t know if—“

“Sif,” Loki gently breaks in, “You’ve earned this. You can handle the extra responsibilities. You would be a terrific sergeant.”

His fingers brush over the back of Sif’s hand, and she lets a small smile flit briefly across her face. She decides to turn the tables. “You should take the exam too.”

The words have hardly left her mouth before Loki’s retorting with an emphatic, “ _Nope_.”

He stares determinedly out the window, not pleased that the shoe is now on the other foot, and Sif scoffs. “Loki! _Come on_. You make sergeant and no one who knows you will think that your dad sat behind the scenes and twirled his evil villain moustache and decided to pull some strings and promote you over someone more deserving. There _is_ no one more deserving! Putting aside the sergeant’s exam itself, which you would _ace_ , you have a master’s in forensic science, the crime lab’s been recruiting you for some top-level position—don’t think I haven’t noticed those hushed phone calls you’ve been taking in the stairwell—and hell, isn’t the FBI still after you? They’re not going to rest until they get you through Quantico.”

Loki’s fingertips tap out a syncopated beat on the armrest, a little too forcefully for it to come off as idle and unaffected as he clearly wants, and she sees the beginnings of a small smile tug at the corner of his lips. “The Behavioral Science Unit, yeah.”

“Loki!” Sif punches his shoulder. “That’s an amazing career opportunity! I’ll get you a nice Chianti to celebrate.”

He laughs, but it quickly trails off, and Sif feels her stomach start to sink. “You’ve told them no.” He doesn’t answer right away. “Loki!”

“Oh, _what_?” he shoots back, defensiveness creeping into his voice, exasperation starting to hunch his shoulders. “Virginia’s not close, alright.”

Sif swallows heavily and tries not to let the jitteriness that she suddenly feels make an appearance in her voice. “If you’re not taking this job for me . . . .”

Loki grabs her hand where it rests on the console between them. “I’m not taking it _right now_ for a lot of reasons, only one of which is indeed you, _us_. The FBI will wait. It’s not the right time for me. I’ll let ‘em get desperate,” he throws in with a wink.

Sif rolls her eyes. “Ugh. You’re _impossible_.”

A mischievous smirk curls across Loki’s lips, and he whispers, “You _love_ that I’m impossible, don’t even try to deny it.” He leans in for a kiss.

Just as Sif turns her head and her lips brush his, a bullet crashes through the windshield and buries itself in the headrest of the passenger seat.

Loki slides to the floorboard with a yelp, and Sif, spitting profanities and saying all manner of unkind things about the Svartalfars, has her door cracked open and her gun out in a flash, turning towards the upper floors of the warehouse and returning fire. Loki stays hunched down as much as possible and frantically digs through the mess in Sif’s back seat.

“What the _hell_ are you doing?” Sif shrieks, aiming carefully at a window on the third floor of the warehouse. She had seen a muzzle flash from that location, and she’s fairly certain the shooting is coming from there and not the roof. “Where’s your gun?”

“In my desk drawer!”

“Oh my god.” At least Loki has the good grace to sound sheepish about it, that’s the only thing that’s keeping Sif from abandoning the firefight to throttle Loki for his uncharacteristic shortsightedness. “Did you think they’d let you get close enough so that you could take them out with a roundhouse kick? For fuck’s sake, Loki!”

“This was to be reconnaissance only! Low-level people only, no real risk, just observation! Usually my gun’s gathering dust in my desk, we so rarely need them when we’re out and about, and I didn’t remember it until we were halfway here, alright, castigate me once we get out of this mess.”

Sif ducks back inside the car momentarily as a bullet goes winging past her head, and she’s pleased to see that, unarmed though he may be, Loki’s far from useless, and he has an extra magazine waiting for her and he’s on the radio with dispatch, calling for backup. Sif reloads, aims at that third-floor window, and takes two shots.

The street falls quiet.

“We gotta clear that building,” she whispers. “Look in the glove compartment.”

Loki does so, the idea of not following Sif’s orders in this moment not even crossing his mind. A gun sits on top of the owner’s manual for Sif’s car. Not department issue.

Loki’s eyebrows nearly hit his hairline. “Sif!”

Sif punches him in the shoulder once more, _hard_ , because he _fucking deserves it_ , heading out on a stakeout and _forgetting_ to bring his gun along. “I had it before I even went through the academy. It’s licensed and registered, what kind of a cop do you think I am?”

“The kind of cop who’s currently saving my ass,” Loki says. He touches Sif’s hand, a fleeting caress before they head out. “Let’s go.”

“Goddamn _right_ I’m saving your ass,” Sif mutters as she gets out of her car and quietly shuts the door, her eyes sweeping along the empty windows of the surrounding buildings.

They inch inside the warehouse and methodically start clearing each floor, only coming across loose papers and trash and spent shotgun shells and random discarded furniture. No one present. “Those henchmen certainly cleared out fast once the shooting started,” Sif comments as they climb up to the third floor. “Didn’t even stick around for the fun.”

“Yeah, I saw them leaving. That van they were loading probably has some pretty precious cargo of the contraband variety,” Loki whispers. “We got a picture of the license plate, and I gave that number to dispatch when I was on with them earlier. There’s probably already a BOLO by now.”

Sif pauses just before they reach the top of the stairs. “You are occasionally useful. Sometimes.”

She can just make out the rueful twist to Loki’s lips in the gloom. “Yeah, thanks,” he says dryly.

They’re nearly at the approximate location of the window where the gunfire had been coming from when Sif sees a shadow. Someone sitting on the floor, leaning up against a column for support. She gestures to Loki, but he’s already nodding that he’s noticed it as well, and he swings around so they can approach from opposite sides. Sif turns the corner and gasps.

Algrim.

Still alive, albeit with two bullet holes in his left shoulder and a graze on his neck. The rifle he had used to shoot at them is on the ground by the window, undoubtedly knocked over when he fell to the floor after Sif shot him.

Loki’s eyes are huge, and the dim light from the streetlamps outside throws the grin blossoming on his face into sharp relief. “Oh Sif,” he breathes. “What a wonderful Christmas present, you shouldn’t have.”

He radios dispatch to send an ambulance, and his grin only widens, even in the face of the death glare Algrim’s leveling his way, when Sif cuffs Algrim’s right hand to the column behind him.

She tugs Loki back out of the way, and as the street outside fills up with flashing emergency lights and screeching sirens, she pulls him into a fierce kiss. “Merry Christmas indeed,” she half-growls against his lips.

 

*

 

**December 21, 2015**

 

The department Christmas party is in full swing, and Sif feels buoyed by everyone else’s good cheer. It’s hard not to be: with the arrest of Algrim, caught dead-to-rights trying to take out two police officers, there’s been a flood of search warrants and arrest warrants, it seems like every magistrate in town has suddenly found probable cause to search anything even remotely connected to the Svartalfars, and although Algrim himself hasn’t said a word while in custody, there’s talk that it’s only going to be a matter of time before _someone_ finally rolls on Malekith, and they manage to take him down too.

Hoenir’s clapped Sif on the shoulder and paraded her around to at least seven lieutenants and four more captains from other departments and precincts, the heroine of the month, _no, the year_ , he corrects himself, and Heimdall, descending from the Internal Affairs department, nods his agreement in that grave and solemn manner of his that indicates he’s truly proud of her, and her own squad, her dear friends, are effusive in their praise of her, with Loki first in line to declaim her quick thinking and fast actions, and he even has the good grace not to gloss over his own lack of weaponry, much to everyone’s amusement.

(“Betcha can’t tell the tale of Sif and her exploits in epic verse!” Fandral challenges.

Loki just rolls his eyes, an _oh, puh-lease_ if there ever was one. And then he does.)

Ingrid, one of the department secretaries, presses a plate piled high with festive sugar cookies into her hands, and Sif takes it and lets the merriment swirls around her.

She hears Volstagg telling a young uniformed officer the story of how he tricked a suspect into believing that the copier was a polygraph machine (a story that Sif’s heard no fewer than thirteen times over the years, but one that never fails to amuse her), and she listens in on Hogun discussing the merits of a new piece of body armor with a couple of officers from the SWAT team, and she catches more than a few ridiculous verses of Fandral and Loki’s rendition of _Jingle Bells_ , and Sif smiles and she is happy.

But it’s also not enough.

She feels antsy, almost like her skin is stretched a little too thin over her bones, and she’s in this room, filled with good food and good drinks and good cheer and good friends, nearly all of the people she loves most in the world, and she just wants _more_.

Her eyes instantly seek out Loki, and he’s not at all hard to find, he’s wearing reindeer antlers that blink alternating red and green lights, and his sweater has twinkling snowflakes on it, and she takes a minute to just _watch_. He’s been nursing the same glass of spiked eggnog for most of the evening, but it’s enough to bring a slight flush to his cheeks, and his eyes are still sparkling from the singing and the epic verse, and he’s beautiful and she loves him. She _loves_ him and his love of terrible Christmas attire and his surprisingly-good singing voice and his interrogation skills and the way he twirls his pen through his fingers and smirks while he’s listening to a suspect dig himself deeper and the way he proofreads all her probable cause affidavits before she goes before the magistrates and his appreciation for horrible puns and _him_.

And she wants everyone to know it.

So she makes her way across the room, abandoning her plate of cookies on Hogun’s desk, and if she _prowls_ more than _walks_ , well, it’s worth it for the way Loki’s eyes go a little wide when he catches a glimpse of her, and she wraps her fingers around his elbow, and she pulls him over to the doorway that heads into the kitchen, and his eyes are bright and there’s a little bit of a smirk on his face and she swears he knows what she’s going to say before she says it.

“If we let everyone in on the secret today,” she murmurs, licking her lips in anticipation, “who will be the lucky winner?”

Loki’s smirk blooms into a full-blown grin. “Ah, funny, that. So, from what I could glean, everyone thought that I would think it’s far too much of a cliché to finally give in to my long-standing passion and ardor for you and declare my undying love on the day of the holiday party. So no one picked it. Which is why that your instinct just now is really the best instinct and we should absolutely—”

“Oh ho!” Fandral’s voice breaks in, and Loki turns to face him, supremely irritated, for he’s never liked it when someone who’s not him ruins a good moment, and Sif has to stop herself from continuing to subtly sway into Loki. “The mistletoe has caught its first victims!”

Sif looks up and sure enough, there it is. Mistletoe, hanging right over her and Loki’s heads in the doorway.

“Well, far be it from us to—”

This time she’s the one to cut Loki off, but Sif does it with a kiss.

And then she drags him out into the squad room proper, and she continues to kiss him, and all the chatter dies away, and she can vaguely hear someone from Volstagg’s collection of Christmas CD’s warbling away at _Blue Christmas_ in the background, but she pays it no mind because her world is in the process of narrowing to the feel of Loki’s lips pressed against hers, and his sweater under her hands (it seems a bit of a waste to use cashmere for such a ridiculous sweater, but that’s Loki for you), and his hands sliding around her waist.

They break apart, and it could be five minutes later, it could be five _years_ later, for all Sif cares, the only thing that concerns her at the moment is the way Loki’s forehead rests against hers and the way he exhales the tiniest of little sighs against her lips before his own curl into a soft, sweet smile.

“Oh,” Fandral says, and it’s the only thing anyone _can_ say.

Loki clears his throat, but he doesn’t take his eyes off of Sif’s as he says, “As you can see, we don’t need the excuse of mistletoe.”

The nervous chuckling this comment brings is broken by a great big belly-laugh from Volstagg, which sets off a string of well-wishers which then descends into howls of _why didn’t I pick the goddamn Christmas party???_ as Hogun consults the betting pool spreadsheet and everyone discovers that _no one_ won the prize money. Hoenir walks by with a muttered comment about the frat regs, but he then follows it up with _about damn time you two, thought I was going to turn gray before you got your shit together_ , and Heimdall gives Sif a half-hug and shakes Loki’s hand and simply says, “Well done. Both of you.”

They turn back to each other, Loki’s hands still around Sif’s waist, and she leans into his chest and says, “You know, when the FBI becomes sufficiently desperate for your tastes, I think there’s a good chance that there might be a police department or a sheriff’s office in the greater D.C. area that could use a good sergeant, don’t you think?”

Loki tips her chin up, and his smile is brighter than all of the lights used to decorate the squad room. “You know, I think you might be right.”

**Author's Note:**

> References galore!
> 
> There are many references to the great 90s TV show Homicide: Life on the Street (and the book on which that show was based, David Simon’s Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets), including: The Board, The Perfect Year, the squad knowing that the Svartalfars are behind tons of crimes but being unable to actually pin anything on them, Loki forgetting his gun in his desk, the copier-as-a-polygraph gag (which can also be seen in [this clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KOXj97cfXM/) from The Wire; nsfw language in the clip), and, possibly, Ho-ho-ho-homicide.
> 
> The picturesque crime scene that Loki and Sif investigate is an oblique homage to three extremely aesthetically pleasing detective/law enforcement shows: Pushing Daisies, Life, and Hannibal. Loki then explicitly references the narration in Pushing Daisies when he introduces the case by saying “the facts are these.”
> 
> The What’s the Greatest Cop/Detective/Law Enforcement Movie of All Time game is a nod to Brooklyn Nine Nine. It’s not mentioned in the fic, but Fandral’s choice, much like Jake Peralta’s, is Die Hard, Volstagg is adamant that The Magnificent Seven should count, and Hogun goes super-classic with The Big Sleep. Loki, meanwhile, would choose Infernal Affairs, the great 2002 Hong Kong movie that was the basis for The Departed, and Sif’s choice would be The Silence of the Lambs. (Clarice Starling is 10000% one of her long-time heroines.)
> 
> Speaking of Silence of the Lambs, Loki’s being recruited by the Behavioral Science Unit, which is the same unit that plucked Clarice Starling out of training at Quantico to consult, and Sif references Hannibal Lecter’s famous line, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
> 
> Law Enforcement References: When Hoenir tells of the dire consequences that will befall his detectives if they screw up Mirandizing a suspect, he’s referring to the Miranda warnings that must be read when suspects are arrested/before they can be questioned (i.e., you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney). Fandral references RICO, the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which was initially designed to go after mob bosses. And BOLO = be on the look out.
> 
> The “Fisk” referred to is Wilson Fisk, from Daredevil.
> 
> Loki is reading Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, which is absolutely laugh-out-loud hilarious, and everyone should read it. (Loki would be a huge Gaiman fan. I thought about having him read American Gods, because Loki is a character in that book, but decided it was a tiny bit too much.)
> 
> Loki’s cats, Beatrice and Benedick, are named after the main characters from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.
> 
> Loki and Fandral are musical theatre fans and they quote lyrics from the song “Red & Black” from Les Misérables (“Red, the blood of angry men”/”Black, the dark of ages past"). Heimdall, meanwhile, breaks my heart by paraphrasing “Best of Wives and Best of Women” from Hamilton, calling Sif “best of daughters, best of women.”


End file.
